He had played prompter for the white folks at a thousand frolics, and knew every step and turn and fling of the heel-tap and the toe, but he had never seen such a peculiar double demi-semi-quiver shuffle as that old buzzard loped around that mule.

I folded my portion of these dispatches small, wrapped them in thin gutta-percha, and, going to the most obscure shoemaker in the part of London which I knew, had the heel of one of my boots excavated and the packet deposited in the hole and covered over again by a stout heel-tap.

This took the Englishman's breath away for a moment, then he remarked: "That accounts for the heel-tap we found; who knows, these people may be possessors of the richest gold and silver mines on earth."

At the slightest heel-tap sounding behind his own, he stopped, looked attentively at the photographs in the windows, or fingered an English or German book lying on a stall, to oblige the police spy to pass him.